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Genius Viral Strategy: Growing Our Live-Music Vertical SaaS to an Incredible $6M+ ARR
Episode 605th April 2024 • B2B SaaS Podcast • Upendra Varma
00:00:00 00:21:56

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In this episode host Upendra Varma welcomes Matt Ford, co-founder and CEO of Prism FM, a vertical SaaS solution for the live music industry.

Here are the talking points,

Product:

  • Prism FM organizes all elements of planning live events, including financials, paperwork, payments, and accounting.

Understanding the Customers:

  • Prism serves various customer profiles, including music venue owners, performing art centers, Broadway organizers, and talent agencies.

Origins and Background:

  • Matt's journey into building Prism stemmed from his experience as a concert promoter and tech entrepreneur.
  • He identified the industry's need for a software system to streamline operations.

Initial Growth and Challenges:

  • Matt initially closed the first 20 deals personally, leveraging his network and attending conferences.
  • Transitioning from founder-led sales to a team-based approach, Prism explored channels like SEO/SEM and traditional marketing.

Sales Process and Pricing Strategy:

  • Sales cycles vary, with smaller deals closing quicker and larger deals taking longer.
  • Prism employs a sophisticated sales pitch focusing on price validation and showcasing value through time and efficiency gains.

Product Marketing and Network Effects:

  • Word of mouth plays a significant role due to inherent network effects, with existing users advocating for Prism within their networks.
  • Product marketing emphasizes the platform's ability to connect and streamline workflows between venues and talent agencies.

Team and Product Development:

  • Prism's team consists of 26 members primarily focused on product development, engineering, sales, and customer support.
  • Matt underscores the importance of in-house product development, emphasizing quality over outsourcing.

Funding and Vision:

  • Prism recently closed a $5 million Series B round, totaling $15 million in funding.
  • Matt envisions Prism becoming an industry standard within the live music sector, with plans for expansion and potential acquisitions.

Future Growth:

  • While specific revenue targets remain uncertain, Matt believes Prism has the potential to reach hundreds of millions in recurring revenue.
  • The focus remains on evolving the product to meet industry needs and capitalize on network effects.

Transcripts

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

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Hello everyone.

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Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast.

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I'm your host Binz Overmind.

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Today, we have Matt Ford with us.

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Matt here is the co founder and

CEO of a company called Prism FM.

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Hey Matt, welcome to the show.

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Matt Ford: Hey, really

grateful to be here.

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Thank you.

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Upendra Varma: All right, Matt.

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Let's try to understand,

right, what Prism is, right?

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And why customers are even paying

you money in the first place.

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Matt Ford: I just, I still ask

myself that question also, so I don't

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know if I can answer that for you.

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All jokes aside, Prism is a vertical SaaS

solution for the live music industry.

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So everyone who professionally

plans concerts is our concerts are

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live events, uh, comedy, Broadway.

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Um, And, uh, yeah, they pay us

to use our software system and

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our software system organizes all

elements of planning an event.

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So from, uh, all the financial

surrounding event, the, all the

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paperwork, the payments, the financial

reporting, the accounting all in

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one like purpose built system.

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Upendra Varma: And who exactly are

these people who are paying you?

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Right?

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So I'll just talk a bit about them.

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Matt Ford: Yeah, we have a few

customer profiles that the software

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works really well for music, venue

owners, people who run performing art

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centers, uh, Broadway organizers, and

then we have the talent side of the

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business, which is, um, talent agency.

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So people who represent the band and are

doing like the business of the bookings.

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Upendra Varma: That makes a lot of sense.

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Right?

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So, and let's, let's move on

to understanding a bit about

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your customers here, right?

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Because I think it's pretty clear

and it's a clear vertical SaaS here.

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So, so just, just give us

some context here, right?

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How did it even start?

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Right?

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How did you sort of, you know,

Come up with this idea of, you

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know, starting a SaaS in this

particular vertical niche, right?

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What's your background and

how did it all start for you?

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Matt Ford: Well, first off, I didn't,

I didn't even know the word vertical

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SAS, to be honest, until I was like

many years into building prism.

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So I didn't start off aspiring

to create a vertical SAS company.

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Um, it just so happened

that it worked out that way.

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Um, and you know, really I was,

I've just been following my passion.

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Um, and you know, so taught myself how

to code in college, started a company.

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It was successful in the live music space.

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Um, we had hundreds of thousands of users.

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I worked with a bunch of, you

know, really got something off the

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ground and proven, proven myself.

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And then a lot of projects

just started coming my way.

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And one of those projects that I

found really interesting was, uh,

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Was a, uh, um, a festival system that

I helped build out with a partner.

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Um, just like a way for people

to organize music festivals.

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And I actually dog fooded the

technology myself and started a

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music festival so that I could

really understand the technology.

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Um, I was like early twenties, like

pretty scrappy, crazy idea to just say,

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Oh yeah, let me just, I'm a tech guy.

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Let me just like start up a festival.

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Um, but the festival really

worked and it led to me getting

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a bunch of, um, opportunities to

book venues in and around Austin.

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I ran the festival for four years.

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I almost like became a concert promoter.

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Um, I almost lost my identity

as a tech entrepreneur and

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became a concert promoter.

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And I think, you know, that's what

helped me deeply understand the space.

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And then just through my experience

in the problem myself and meeting

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other organizers of concerts.

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Um, I saw that they were all running

their business off of spreadsheets

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that, you know, bedding together

quick books with calendars, with

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spreadsheets and, and no one had a

really great kind of system of truth.

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And, you know, given my software

background, I could, you know, see

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that and, um, and, you know, made

it come to life and called it prism.

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And I've been working on it ever since.

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And this was about like 20, we

officially launched in:

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It took all of 2017 to build

it and get it off the ground.

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And then 2018 was our coming out year.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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And what exactly were you

doing before you started Prism?

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Was, were you doing some sort of

consultancy or what was that exactly?

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Matt Ford: Yeah, so I, so there

was a company that predated

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Prism, um, and it was part concert

promoter and part software.

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So I had created like an Airbnb

for venues and artists to match.

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Um, so I had over a thousand bands signed

up in Austin and I was really mostly

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using it myself to like have a roster

of bands that I was booking personally.

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We never really succeeded in

getting other kind of professional

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venues to use the software.

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I don't think it was the right, um,

I've seen this, I've seen this kind

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of idea get tried many, many, many

times, like Airbnb for booking.

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Um, and there's many reasons why

it, you know, I could tell you why

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I don't think it is economically

feasible, at least currently.

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Um, but you know, that, that led me

realizing that it wasn't like the,

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it wasn't like the core booking kind

of network that the industry needed.

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It was more of like a,

uh, like a salesforce.

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com super customized for the industry to

like kind of, to ha to handle the fire

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hose that they all are drinking from

on a daily basis, as opposed to adding

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more complexity to their organization.

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Um, so that's, yeah, that's what I was

doing for Prism was I was, it was, you

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know, part booking, part software system.

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Upendra Varma: All right.

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So let's, let's come back to today, right?

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So, so how many customers

are we talking about today?

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How many paying customers are

you, are using Prism today?

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Matt Ford: We have 315 organizations,

something like that, booking over

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10, 000 venues around the world and

a hundred thousand concerts and, um,

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in total, there's about a, a billion

dollars of payments flowing through Prism

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Upendra Varma: And then give

us a sense of how they pay you.

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Is it, is it, is it simply a subscription

based platform or do you take a cut

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on, you know, in terms of the revenue

that, that goes through your platform?

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What happens?

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Matt Ford: it's purely subscription

right now, which is determined by the

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size of their business by a sales rep

and, um, and it's upsold on renewal,

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like we don't currently have a lot,

any like automation built into.

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Um, the SAS fees, like, Oh,

turn on this module or add a.

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No, like user account or, um, we don't

have anything feature gated really.

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Um, it's just, we, we have account

management that handles upsell and, um,

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and sales reps that like really, you know,

right sides, the deals as they come in.

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Uh, we do plan to take, um, eventually a

cut of transactions process through prism.

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Um, but that's not yet.

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Um, we're not doing that yet.

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Upendra Varma: And then how big of a

deals are we talking about Matt here?

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And so approximately, is

it a thousand dollar deal?

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Is it a 10, 000 deal?

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Is it a hundred thousand dollar deal?

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How much do your organizations

pay you typically on average?

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Matt Ford: Yeah.

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On the high end, we have folks,

you know, deep into the hundreds

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of thousands of dollars.

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And on the low end, we go down to like 5,

000 a year and a lot of stuff in between.

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So it's, it's pretty, it's pretty wide.

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Upendra Varma: that median?

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What's that median look like?

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Something that you sort of

focus on a regular basis.

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Matt Ford: Oh, like maybe, maybe

like 15, 000 a year, 12, 000 a year.

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That's that's yeah.

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Upendra Varma: That

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Matt Ford: mean, it's a lot

of everything to be honest.

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Upendra Varma: it always is.

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So I'm just, I'm just sort of trying to

understand your sales motion because I'm

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going to ask a lot of questions there.

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So just trying to get a sense

of what that deal looks like.

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Matt Ford: Our, our scatterplot is all

over the place, but you could imagine

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that, you know, it's a, it's a higher

volume of deals on the lower end,

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the medium to lower end and a smaller

volume on the higher end, um, that

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we would like, you know, that would

be amazing if it was reversed, but

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it seems to be that way of the world.

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Upendra Varma: And then approximately how

much revenue are you doing today, right?

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Approximate numbers totally work.

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Just to get a sense of

where you are as a company.

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Matt Ford: Um, yeah, we're, we're, uh,

I'm going to be intentionally vague

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just cause we don't publicize our

revenue, but you know, we're, we're

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below 10 million in recurring revenue.

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Well, well below

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Upendra Varma: you above five, 6 million?

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Is that

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Matt Ford: you could infer that if you

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Upendra Varma: sure?

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Yeah, I think that's

more than enough for me.

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Right.

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So, so just want to get a sense

of how you're growing as well.

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Right.

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So.

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Over the past 12

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Matt Ford: Yeah.

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We've been, we've been

growing since our inception.

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We've been growing around like a hundred

percent year over year and sustain.

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I mean, early on, like law of small

numbers, like we had one year where

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we went from 40 K to 400 K and that

was 10 X, but You know, um, but you

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know, after our initial kind of pop,

we, we've been sustaining about,

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you know, two X year over year.

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Upendra Varma: got it, right.

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So enough about the numbers, right?

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So I want to understand what's happening

and what's working for you, right?

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So the past 12 months, right?

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So just help us understand

where you're getting all of

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these new customers from, right?

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What's really been working for you

purely from a top of funnel perspective,

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where are they discovering you?

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Matt Ford: It, I mean, it's, there's

no, no silver bullet right now.

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Like I think, you know, the product

has built in Network effects.

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So, um, there's a ton of

world and word of mouth.

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Um, like if you, if you are a talent

agent and you use Prism and the promoters

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are using Prism, you, you want the

promoters to use Prism because it

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saves you massive amounts of time and

it's a better organ to organization.

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So there's a, there's a lot of like

kind of multi sided pressure to join

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the network and we're, we're leaning

in on that more and more and more, like

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some of the best things If you can pull

it off the best marketing strategy is

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like products, you know, um, and all

the paperwork that leaves prism has our

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logo on it and our marketing website.

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So we generate a lot of marketing just

through product use, which is fantastic.

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Um, but then we do traditional

marketing, SEO, SCM, and we have

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sales reps go to conferences.

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Um, we have sales reps work relationships

and, um, and, you know, I, I do a podcast

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similar to you do here and blast out

to the network and, um, just every,

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we try to leave no stone unturned in

terms of like top of funnel strategies.

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Upendra Varma: So I'm going to ask

you a bit of a question here, right?

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So if you were to pick two

channels, that's, that's, that

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you would really not want to sort

of invest your time into, right?

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What are those two channels which

contributed to most of this, you

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know, brand awareness or, you

know, new customers coming through,

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coming through that funnel?

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Matt Ford: Well, what are

the two that if I had to do

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Upendra Varma: Yeah, that's,

that's really been working for you.

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Matt Ford: product marketing, um,

and I'd say it's a toss up between

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conferences and SEO and SEM.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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All right.

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So, so now let's, let's sort of understand

a bit about your product marketing here,

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because that's, that's something that

unique that I've seen over, you know,

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with respect to your company, just

talk about how it all works, right?

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So the way I'm understanding you, you

sell your product to a bunch of business

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users and they sort of onboard more people

into the network and they sort of start

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seeing it and then that sort of spirals

up like what, how does it exactly work?

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Can you just explain that?

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Matt Ford: Yeah, so when you're when

you're planning one concert, you have

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oversimplified, you have the venue,

and then you have the talent agency

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and the venue and the talent agency

coordinate an amazing amount of details.

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Like the the first thing they do

is generate like a pro forma of the

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show, we call it an offer, and it lays

out all the financials of the event.

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And they send that to the agent, the

agent, if they're not using prison,

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the agent, like just kind of copies

and paste that information into their

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system, generates a contract with

all the, and, and these, these deal

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points have like probably 30 deal

points that are meaningful and matter.

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So the, the data entry

is extremely tedious.

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Uh, and then all through the life

cycle of the event, they're just doing

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all these things that, you know, a

software platform can handle really

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easily, but if they're not connected.

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Like it just turns out

to be a bunch of emails.

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So, um, if, if the venue and the agent

is both using prism, the, the deal

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points are all translated perfectly.

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The ticket sales update in real time,

the settlement numbers update in

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real time, the payment information.

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I mean, it's a nine day difference

from one, two people are using

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prism compared to like when one

is in prison and one is not.

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So, um, it's really, it's like,

uh, Implicit network effects.

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There's not like an explicit

way for someone to say.

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Hey, just join prism here

without like talking to us.

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And perhaps we'll get

into that more and more.

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But, um, right now it's like very

much like, uh, you know, yeah, it's,

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our partners want their partners

to join prism and go through our

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onboarding process so that, so that

it's easier to do business together.

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So that's what

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Upendra Varma: essentially you have

a talent partner as a customer.

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So naturally they end up sort of, you

know, bringing all of this, when you,

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when you sort of, when you manage

managers to your platform as well.

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Right.

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And the reverse also works.

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Matt Ford: Yeah.

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And then it's just an amazing

amount of word of mouth.

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Like when we, when we're, you

know, now that we're successful in

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Austin, Texas, like the people who

all run venues in Austin, like.

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Know each other really well and

they're like Hey, you should use Prism.

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We use Prism.

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It's like massively helpful.

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And at first, sometimes

they were, they were caught.

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And they're like, Oh, they

saw it as an advantage.

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They're like, Oh, we, we want to, we

don't, I don't know if we want to tell

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anyone about Prism because we want

it for ourselves, but over time folks

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realize that the more people use it,

the better the system gets and yeah.

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Upendra Varma: And that

makes a lot of sense.

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Let's just talk about

the sales cycle here.

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Right?

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So, so when somebody starts

discovering you, what does it take

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for you to sort of close that 50,

000 deal that you talked about?

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Matt Ford: Yeah, I mean, um, once again,

our scatterplot is like very diverse.

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Um, but you know, if we cut through

it, it averages about 45 days and it's

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exactly what you think you would like.

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The typical small deal closes in 30 days.

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The typical big deal

might close in 90 days.

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But then there's examples

of bull flip flopping.

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So, um, you know, like, yeah, once

again, the, the mean of the mean cutting

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through the noise is smaller deals

take quicker, larger deals take longer.

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Um, but it, but we do have a lot

of like deviation in our mean.

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Upendra Varma: And then what happens

during the sales process as such, right?

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So what exactly are you trying

to sort of, how exactly are you

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showcasing the value, right?

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Is your customer switching from sort

of Excel's and, you know, Google docs

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to sort of your platform or do you

have any competitor out there that you

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want them to switch, pitch from it?

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What, what exactly happens?

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How do you convince them?

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Matt Ford: Yeah.

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Re recently I, I finally hired like

professional sales and, um, you eyeopening

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experience for me because I think, you

know, I, I, I think the biggest thing

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that he's instilled, his name is Dustin.

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Dustin Duvonage, he's instilled, um,

like this idea of price validation,

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um, in, in our sales reps and like

really kind of making a business use

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case around like, Hey, like, you're,

you have a workflow right now that is.

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the core flow of your business and

it takes a certain amount of hours to

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do it the way that you're doing it.

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And, um, to generate a certain

amount of output and what could you,

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how much would it be worth if you

dramatically reduce the number of

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hours and dramatically simultaneously

dramatically increase the throughput.

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Um, and, and then, you know, backing

into price based off of that and.

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Um, you know, at first it was

hard to get Prism sold for 1,

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000 a year or 3, 000 a year.

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And, um, maybe that was the fact

that we just were extremely early.

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Um, but I think, you know, we, we, we

didn't do the best job of validating

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like why a price really makes sense.

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But, you know, to start getting like

30, 40, 000 contracts, one way we

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started talking about it is like,

all right, look, like if you don't

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spend 30, 000 in Prism, like let's

say you go and hire someone for 30K.

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Like what can, what realistically can

one 30 K a year employee do for you?

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Um, what is the value you're

going to get out of prism?

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Um, like, do you care

about your profitability?

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Do you care about getting time back?

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So it is a more sophisticated sales

pitch that we've developed over time

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and it works, it works really well.

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Yeah.

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And I didn't quite believe it at first.

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I was like very much just like build

the best product and they will come.

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And I think that's true

to a certain extent.

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Um, but people also won't pay you

your value unless you ask for it.

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Upendra Varma: All right, man.

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So let's, let's go back

to:

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During this first couple of years, right?

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So just talk about how you got

those first 10 odd customers.

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Matt Ford: Yeah, 2017, 2018, um,

:

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eye, but, uh, yeah, so, uh, we, we

had a, we had a flagship customer

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we were building for in 2017.

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And it was important for me to

just get a few others in, um,

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like one was absolutely committed.

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And I had probably five that were

like weighing in on specific things.

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And I was meeting with them consistently.

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And that was

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Upendra Varma: did you

knew them basically?

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How did you knew

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Matt Ford: Is that, well, I, uh,

cause I was booking shows in Austin.

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So I had built up a network of

venue owners and just found the

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most kind of tech savvy one.

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Um, you know, for me having five was

great, but having one that was like, I

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am, I'm going to push my team through

jumping on here before it's ready.

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Um, I'm going to push you to get

it ready to have my team jump on.

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But then when it's like good enough, I'm

going to, I'm going to like, You know,

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maybe swallow some grief from my team

of them being slightly more inefficient

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at first trusting that you'll be able

to adapt and make them more efficient.

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Um, that's always been

extremely useful for us.

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Um, and that like, you know,

White House customer that's

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:

willing to, uh, endure some pain.

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And we've used that in other

customer segments now as well.

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We've had, we, I would say we have

about five or six unique customer

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:

segments and, and each one I can

point to like an original White House

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:

customer in those situations that.

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Just wanted it so bad that they

were willing to go through the pain

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management of switching and, and

having something that was nascent.

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Um, and I think the art of that is

just really good communication and, and

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being clear, like, hey, and, and then

just following through, like, talk,

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having real talk with the engineering

team and saying, hey, like, you know,

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we really have to rapidly develop with

these folks, like, we have to find

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:

a way to get them quick solutions.

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Like, they're, they're taking

a leap of faith with us.

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Um, we have to, we have to just,

we can't leave them hanging

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and say, Oh, you know, you,

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:

Upendra Varma: yeah, Matt's

one question here, right?

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So when did that transition happen?

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Right.

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:

And like, for example, when did it

go from you founder led sales to your

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:

team, sort of closing that deals.

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:

So like when you were, when

you were doing that, right.

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:

So what channels would really be, what

channels have worked for you, right.

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:

So what was that first marketing channel

that was, that sort of brought you more

363

:

leads and that, that you were able to

close without your own, without you

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:

not having to use your own network.

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:

Matt Ford: the first, the

first 20 deals was me.

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I closed personally and it was me

going to conferences and relationships.

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Yeah.

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:

Upendra Varma: that 20, right?

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:

From between 20 to 50, what's that?

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Matt Ford: Yeah.

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Um, you know, then I'd say we started

developing SEO and SEM and just showing

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up on search engine marketing and that's

never been a silver bullet for us, but

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it's consistently high quality leads.

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Um, and that, and.

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And then I just, and then it was, I mean,

for a long time, we've, we it's our, I

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:

wouldn't claim that we've done anything.

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:

Inventive around getting

ourselves out there.

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:

It's just hiring good reps that are

showing up at the conferences and building

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:

relationships and, and then, you know,

creating word of mouth from the product.

380

:

And then it's just kind of snowball.

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:

Yeah.

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:

It's been a overnight success

that took eight years or not

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:

eight, but like six at this point.

384

:

Yeah.

385

:

Upendra Varma: So Madeline, talk

about your team today, right?

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:

So how many folks do you have on

your team and what do they do?

387

:

Matt Ford: Uh, 26 primarily, you know, 17

in product and engineering, uh, six in.

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:

Um, sales and go to market

and then three in customer

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:

Upendra Varma: So were you always

building the product in house or did you

390

:

ever sort of outsource it or all this?

391

:

And what, what was the reason there?

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:

Why, why didn't you

sort of explore sort of,

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:

Matt Ford: Well, we are nothing but

a pro, like, like you could boil

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:

down like, yeah, we have a good

team, but it's the good team is

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:

only there because of the products.

396

:

Um, and it's, it's the core of what we do.

397

:

Like, I think everyone at the company

works on the product, whether you're in

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:

customer support and, or you're in sales

and you're getting new people to use it.

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:

Um, so, and, and the most direct thing you

can do to work on the product is build it.

400

:

And, uh, I mean, we take.

401

:

Every engineering decision, extremely

seriously from architecture to

402

:

code review to QA, um, and, uh,

like you can't, I never felt like

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:

I could outsource my secret sauce.

404

:

Like, it's just, it's not even been

an option for me, like not even close

405

:

quality over quantity, you know,

cause we're, we're a tech company.

406

:

We're not like to outsource my

product, I think would just be

407

:

like, I like, that would be a

house of cards in my perspective.

408

:

It's like.

409

:

I'm like brewing beer, but I,

I don't know how to make beer.

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:

You know,

411

:

Upendra Varma: Yeah.

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:

That's that, that makes a lot of sense.

413

:

And how much money have you

raised in external funding so far?

414

:

Matt Ford: we just closed

5 million series B.

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:

Um, and that puts us up to

like 15 million in total.

416

:

Upendra Varma: All right.

417

:

So like one last question here, right?

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:

What's, what's the vision here, right?

419

:

Where do you see your company going like

five, five, six years down the line?

420

:

Right.

421

:

What's the big vision here?

422

:

Matt Ford: Um, I think I'm more so

like a two to three year type person

423

:

right now and, and two to three years.

424

:

The main, the main vision of Prism is

to be, is to create a platform shift in

425

:

the live music industry such that like,

it's not like you're using something

426

:

like Prism to run your business.

427

:

And I think we're about three

years away from doing that.

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:

And like it just being so

aggressively good that.

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You know, an overwhelming

percent of the industry is using

430

:

Prism as an industry standard.

431

:

Um, and it's a fully robust network system

and payments are flowing through Prism.

432

:

Um, so I think that's like mission

one and there's a lot of unknowns.

433

:

It's hard to see around that corner.

434

:

Like I'm kind of, I'm

really got my head down.

435

:

Like, I know that that could be a

launch pad for many other products and.

436

:

And acquisitions and all that.

437

:

Um, I don't fully know what's

on the other side of this

438

:

horizon that we're approaching.

439

:

Um, but that's, that's what I see in

the next three years happening with us.

440

:

Um, I gotta, you know, is that, is

that 50 million recurring revenue?

441

:

Is that 80 million?

442

:

Is that, you know, 120,

um, you know, how, how

443

:

Upendra Varma: you've got to

give me a number here, right?

444

:

So

445

:

Matt Ford: I don't, I

don't fully know yet.

446

:

I don't fully know yet.

447

:

I mean, uh, the, we, we will find out.

448

:

I mean, I think it has potential to

be, uh, without evolving the product.

449

:

I think it has potential to be

in the hundreds of millions.

450

:

Um, but you know, I also like, you know,

we'll see, we'll see how many professional

451

:

venue organizers are out there.

452

:

I've got, I've got numbers on a

spreadsheet, but it's, that's,

453

:

that's numbers on a spreadsheet.

454

:

Let's, let's see what actually happens.

455

:

Upendra Varma: Yeah.

456

:

All right, Matt.

457

:

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

458

:

Hope you scale Prism to

much, much greater heights.

459

:

Matt Ford: Thank you.

460

:

Thank you.

461

:

God willing.

462

:

Appreciate it.

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